Drug discovery, as currently practiced in the art, is a long, multiple step process involving identification of specific disease targets, development of an assay based on a specific target, validation of the assay, optimization and automation of the assay to produce a screen, high throughput screening of compound libraries using the assay to identify “hits”, hit validation, and hit compound optimization. The output of this process is a lead compound that goes into pre-clinical and, if validated, eventually into clinical trials. In this process, the screening phase is distinct from the assay development phases, and involves testing compound efficacy in living biological systems. Drug discovery efforts often lead to identification of bioactive agents that have unknown or only partially understood systemic effects. Determining how these agents act is usually a labor-intensive process with an uncertain conclusion.
Certain aspects of this disclosure relate to a high-throughput cell-based screening assay that may be employed in drug discovery.